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Home of that Great Gretsch Sound!Wed, 08 Jul 2015 13:16:39 +0000http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2enhourly1Georgia Southern University Salutes Gretsch Familyhttp://blog.gretsch.com/georgia-southern-university-salutes-gretsch-family/2012/12/
http://blog.gretsch.com/georgia-southern-university-salutes-gretsch-family/2012/12/#commentsSat, 22 Dec 2012 20:28:47 +0000eKeffer78635http://blog.gretsch.com/?p=3629CLASS Connect magazine highlights Gretsch support of music education program.

Dinah & Fred Gretsch

The Spring/Summer 2013 edition of CLASS Connect—the biannual alumni publication of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro—will present an interview with Fred and Dinah Gretsch (president and CFO, respectively, of the Savannah-based Gretsch Company). The interview, conducted by author Loretta Brandon, will focus on the support that the Gretsch Family is providing to music education in the Statesboro area, in conjunction with GSU.

This past fall, students attending the after-school program at the Bulloch County Boys & Girls Club were given the opportunity to participate in a new music-education curriculum. This was the beginning of a five-year program initiated by Fred and Dinah Gretsch and funded by The Sylvia and William Gretsch Memorial Foundation.

The Gretsch gift to Georgia Southern’s music department—more than $76,000 over the next five years—will provide beginning-level folk guitars, drums, and teaching materials to the Boys & Girls Club. Their gift will also fund teaching by graduate and undergraduate music education majors from GSU, as well as an annual evaluation by a program director and evaluation team from the university’s College of Education.

Many of the children who attend the Boys & Girls Club are from low socio-economic backgrounds, with no access to extra-curricular programs such as music lessons. The Gretsch/GSU program will give these children an opportunity for self-expression, while having an overall impact on their education.

In the CLASS Connect interview Dinah Gretsch states: “Our goal is to enrich lives through music. We want to create a model program that could be repeated around the state. We believe this will provide an example of what could be done for students. We also believe that parents appreciate opportunities for their children. So they, too, will benefit if their children get involved in music.”

Parents and grandparents themselves, Fred and Dinah Gretsch are visionary people who believe that music has the power to change children’s lives for the better. Says Dinah, “If we can just reach them with that power, we can set them on a positive path for the rest of their lives.”